Speaking of the Ferrari 458 Italia:
Let's say you bought a Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon, with a 6.2-liter, 556-horsepower Corvette V8, six-speed manual transmission.... thundering through the quarter-mile in 11.9 seconds at 116 mph, according to my colleagues at Car and Driver, who do impeccable instrumented testing.
....this wagon is about as esoteric an automobile as you're likely to find. Statistically speaking, General Motors will sell exactly none of these cars, the Detroit equivalent of Zoroastrianism.
But if you did buy one, what would you do with it? You'd have a lot of options.
Such a car would be useful if you wanted to duck car-pooling duty or avoid field trips with the Cub Scouts, because no child emerging weepy and jelly-kneed from the back seats of this supercharged washing machine will ever want to get back in.
Perhaps you could put on demonstrations for the local high-school physics club, using the g-meter built into the car's instrument cluster to show exactly what more than 1 g of lateral acceleration feels like. It feels like a fat lady is trying to push you out the side window. Or if not physics, the Greek club, since like Antaeus the V-Wagon maintains an Olympian grip on the earth and draws strength from it. Maybe you could help out at the police training range, letting cadets chase you to improve their hot-pursuit driving skills. Then, having been completely demoralized, these plebes will quit to become firemen. The world needs firemen.
The only people who will want this car are people like me, dizzy enthusiasts and car lovers, but more than that: car reviewers. Car reviewers cycle in and out of dozens of new cars every year. We buy not, neither do we lease. And because of that, we can afford to fall in love with a snot-flinging rodeo bull like the V-Wagon (or cars like the now-defunct Dodge Magnum, the Audi RS6 Avant, Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG Estate or the Europe-only BMW M5 Touring). If we were spending our own money, we might reasonably ask why a station wagon needs to be faster than a mid-1990s Lamborghini.
By DAN NEIL at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703555804576102202985268590.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
"Displacement! No, MORE displacement! No, more than THAT! Offset journals and crank throws and who gives a good rat's thyroid if the piston skirts are in contact with the holes at the bottom end!
496 CID? No! More! 500? Keep at it! A Callies crank? 540? Yes!
540 flag waving, magnificent, glory laden American cubic inches! But flow? Heads! From Indy! Fire hoses have less flow! Fuel injection? Not a chance! No drama! No history!
Carbs! Leviathan carbs! 900! No! 1,000! What, are you lame? 1,100! Yes! 2200 CFM worth of carbs at full throttle that look like the Deep Throat Tunnel project during a class 5 rainstorm!
And what do you mean, atmospheric pressure? If I want atmospheric pressure, I'll inhale! Belts! Blowers! Boost! No, MORE boost! No, more than THAT! A Procharger F1R!
Dammit Boost is America! Why the hell did we go through the revolutionary war and adopt Adam Smith and put up the flag on Mt Suribachi and survive Jimmy Carter if we aren't going to have boost? How's 20 pounds? 20? Not a chance! make it a nice round number like 29! What? The motor will blow up? Intercoolers! No, bigger than that!
Set to chill Chernobyl! Heat exchangers that hang icicles in Hades! We're going for a column of air that would flash freeze green beans, denser that Elena Kagan, but half the weight and triple the throughput!"
The Buick Lacrosse's interior is so quiet that you often reutrn to find it infested with monks. It's so quiet, it told some ninjas to pipe down.
...Ezra Dyer
For the record, killing is bad and should be avoided, along with Brussels sprouts and flip-flops in the workplace. Still, I call this one Kill the Car Guy. It's a phrase I've just had enough of. Everybody's a car guy these days; just ask them.
You used to have real credentials to call yourself a car guy. Grated knuckle skin. Greasy fingernails. R Compound tires. A racing trophy. Proof you've been to some racetrack somewhere at sometime. A basic understanding of the internal combustion engine. Knowing how to heel-and-toe downshift. Knowing how to do a proper burnout. Knowing the GT-R is not the new Skyline. Knowing which one is Bo and which is Luke. Something.
Relax. I'm not saying you need to know all this stuff to qualify. It's not that simple. There's no litmus test here. You just need to invest in cars. What you choose to invest is up to you: could be your time, your brain power, your garage space, your weekends, your marriage, or of course all of the above. I don't care what it is, but I know this; being a car guy should not be free.
There was a time when it wasn't. As little as a decade ago, car guy status still had to be earned. Earned through your knowledge and your actions. You had to have real passion for this stuff; you weren't in the club just because you wanted to be. You had to truly care and you had to make the sacrifices that come along with the commitment. It wasn't enough for cars to be just a passing interest, they had to be a high priority, an very important part of your life.
And now that every knit shirt knows Ol' Shel tuned up some Mustangs 100 years ago, that's not enough to qualify you anymore. Mrs. The Mechanic knows that much. If you're going to use your Shelby knowledge to substantiate your car guy qualifications, you better know what year he won Le Mans and what he was driving.
If not, get off my lawn.
http://blogs.edmunds.com/straightline/2008/10/kill-the-car-guy.html
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